What would happen to the earths orbit if the sun just vanished?
The other planets would be affected by Jupiter’s gravity yes. They already are now, after all. But Jupiter is much smaller than the Sun, and so it’s gravitational attracting is much lower. And the planets are going much faster than the escape velocity from Jupiter, so they’d pretty much just keep going almost straight from where they were when the Sun disappeared and would leave the area. Sure, Jupiter’s (and all the other planet’s) gravity would affect them, but the effect wouldn’t be large enough to make the planets stick around or orbit Jupiter. Pluto’s orbital velocity is the lowest of all the planets (oh wait, they don’t call it a planet anymore, poor Pluto!) but it’s so far away from Jupiter that Jupiter’s gravity wouldn’t affect it much. However, if Saturn was as close to Jupiter as it ever gets when the Sun disappeared, Saturn and Jupiter might start orbiting each other. And the asteroids close might start orbiting them as well. It really depends on just how close they started,
